review: Lethal Enforcers

In the early 90's, when I was a small child. I thought this game was THE SHIT. First time I played it was when my older brother rented the Genesis version, and I fucking loved it. The digitized graphics, the music, the voices, everything. It was fun to play back in 1992/93, and it's still fun to play to this day. Without it, we wouldn't have games like Time Crisis or Virtua Cop or any of those. The game is set in modern day Chicago. You're a newly recruited police officer, and you're objective is simple:Clean up the town from the scum that terrorize it. There's 5 stages starting with foiling a simple bank robbery, followed by stopping an assault on Chinatown by a gang of assassins, then a hijack at the airport, a drug deal at the harbor, and then a showdown at the chemical plant. There's also these shooting practice stages every now and then. There's 6 different ranks in the game. You start off as a Patrolman, and you work your way up to Detective, Sergeant, Captain, Lieutenant, and if you do REALLY good, Commander. But don't shoot any civilians, because you'll get dropped a rank if you do. I have the game for the Super Nintendo, Sega CD, and I recently bought the Deluxe Pack for the PlayStation One. The SNES, Genesis and Sega CD games came with a blue light gun called "The Justifier", and it kicks ass. I feel like a total badass every time I play with The Justifier. Anyway, when it comes to non-arcade versions, I'd say the SNES one is superior in more ways than one. The graphics obviously look better, the music sounds just like it does in the arcade, you get to pick where you want to go first, like in the arcade version, and if you accidentally shoot a civilian, you don't have to replay the level again. This version also has some censorship, like when you kill enemies, they don't fall back or anything, they just stay in the same pose, and when you get shot or stabbed, what's supposed to be blood is white, so it looks like the bullets or knives hit glass or something. Also, Stage 2:Chinatown Assault was renamed "Downtown Assault". It's also called that in the japanese version of this port. And Stage 4:The Drug Deal is called "Gun Runners". But really, you're not gonna let a little censorship stop you now, are you? The Genesis is more violent than the SNES game, but the graphics look like shit, you can't pick what level you want to go to first, if you accidentally shoot ONE civilian, you have to re-do the level ALL OVER AGAIN, and that sucks. Plus the music sounds like crap. The Sega CD version is the same exact thing, only the music sounds different, and better. I wonder if the Kukeiha Club did the music for this version of the game. It's not the same as the music in the original arcade version, which was done by Junya Nakano, who now works for Square Soft. The music in the Sega CD version is completely re-arranged. So if you'd rather play the game on a Sega console, play the Sega CD one, and pass on the Genesis cart.

Bottom Line:Lethal Enforcers is one of the most important games in Konami's long history, and one of the greatest games of all time. Unfortunately, there weren't any other SNES games that used The Justifier, and the only other Sega titles that it was compatible with were "Lethal Enforcers II - Gun Fighters", and the shooting sequences in the swan song of Hideo Kojima's entire career:Snatcher.

Overall:5 out of 5

TRIVIA:In Snatcher for the Sega CD, if you go to JORDAN (the computer at Junker HQ), and enter "OTANI" into the database, you get a sort of bio for someone named Masanori Otani. He leaves a personal message saying "Shoot me in Lethal Enforcers". Masanori Otani played the villians in the purple suits from the Chinatown Assault stage in Lethal Enforcers (I think they're the coolest villians in the game IMO), and that's what that message is making reference to. I tried finding a photograph of this guy, but I can't find any other than his digitized form in LE. There's some other LE references in the game too. There's this one guy, when you call him on Metal Gear's video phone, he says something that like thanks anyone playing the game who also bought Lethal Enforcers, and about how this version of the game supports The Justifier. And when you go to the nightclub called "Outer Heaven", there are a bunch of characters from other Konami games there. One of them is the boss from Chinatown Assault in Lethal Enforcers. I wonder if all these LE references were in this version just because of The Justifier support?